Tired, wiser for the time - Broke down car blues

I'm not a big fan of American cars at the moment. Driving back from Troy on Saturday night, the 1996 Chevrolet Caprice, half way between Lansing and Grand Rapids decided to do a weird misfire - I wrote it off as a fluke or bad gas. Anyway, I get to the now legendary exit 40A on I-96 which is for Cascase and the engine starts to sound like the Tasmanian devil on a bad day. It acted like it had sucked junk into the fuel injectors or something along those lines.

A little gas later and a little swear words later, I was back on the road but the 'check engine' light was now on for good. Now, if I were to believe the gas gage, I had nearly 1/4 of a tank of gas yet it acted like it was empty.

OK, no worries.. I drop off the car at the car place, and my parents pick me up to drop me off at home. All is well, right?

Well, coming home today the slight whine the 1999 Dodge Stratus had last week has turned into Spookie Oookie from Jimmy Neutron - that's the best way I could describe the noise. Oh, and I forgot one other part, it wouldn't shift out of 3rd gear anymore. When I was researching cars the other week, I happened upon a Dodge forum website and the general consensus was that the 1999's were great cars except for the transmission. At the time I was thinking, "Boy, I sure have been lucky with mine so far! Maybe I lucked out for once!"

I wish I was making this up but I ended up passing O'Neill's Transmission on old 28th Street just the other day, and there were 3 late 90s white Stratus cars in the parking lot. Did I mention that a black cat crossed my trail last night too? Yeah, it happened.

So, both cars are at the car place, and I'm driving the 1996 Ford Aerostar that is in need of a tuneup. It has more shakes than a junkie in rehab but at least it goes down the road until I can figure out what I'm going to do with my car situation.

I need some reliable wheels.

On a good note, Cassandra's surgery went fantastic today.